My brother sucked on his teeth and bit his lip in an
attempt to mask the pain as I rubbed sesame oil
into his shoulders. His shoulders were lean but
woven together with sinewy muscles toned by
hours of labor, and his skin had darkened to match
the color of the fertile loam that he tilled. His
shoulders were usually hidden beneath hand-medowns
from our father, a barrel-chested man who
wore shirts that were large and unflattering on my
pubescent brother. Now, however, my brother’s
shoulders were exposed and covered with fire ant
bites.
“I warned you Seenu, I warned you. Did I not?”
“Yes Papa, you did.” My brother answered without
missing a beat. No questions were rhetorical in our
household. My brother, unwilling and unable to
match Papa’s ice-cold glare, watched Papa’s bare
feet pace across the dining room floor. I dipped my
fingers into the cup of oil and hoped that I would
evanesce if I just focused all of my attention on my
brother’s shoulders. My brother winced and his
muscles rippled outwards from the impact of my
hands on his body.
“Beti, don’t forget to tend to the bruises on his wrists
and ankles, too.” Despite my wishes, I hadn’t disappeared.
“Yes Papa.” I matched my brother’s submissive
tone. I had learned from his mistakes how to speak
to Papa when he was angry. I lubricated my hands
again and began massaging the rope burns on my
brother’s wrists.
“Seenu, gambling is evil. You know that. Look at
what it did to Mister Rajendra – he is corrupted
and his whole family suffers for his sake. Look at
how thin his boy is! And Lord knows he would
gamble his wife away too, just like Draupadi for a
roll of the dice.”
“Papa, I won though. We will eat tummy-full all
week.” My brother’s head remained craned
downwards – he offered obedience with his
demeanor and voice, but not with his words. I dug
into his tender wrists with my thumbs in an
attempt to rein him in and prevent him from
talking back to Papa.
“Win or lose is irrelevant, gambling is gambling.
When you gamble, you gain and spend too
quickly. It’s unnatural, unethical. In life, change
must be gradual and intentional. Life is too short already;
there is no time for heavy windfalls and sudden losses.”
My brother stiffened at the spine one vertebra at a
time and twisted his arms, breaking free from my
grip. I did not resist him, fearing that I might
aggravate his wounds. He cocked his head
upwards and met my father’s gaze, shedding his
façade of complacency.
“Was losing Mom gradual? expected? deliberate?”
“Shut up before I throw you back on that anthill!”
My brother jumped to his feet and marched to our
room. His oily figure became a mirage under the
harsh summer light.
***
My brother only ever bet on cock fights. I always
thought that his proclivity for cock fighting was a
gradual, natural progression in the course of his
life line. Papa would bring him to watch the cock
fights during the Sankranti festival each year ever
since I was still in the womb and my brother was
too young to retain memories. As the cocks
charged at each other with the calculation of
drunkards, Papa would whisper commentary into my
brother’s ear.
“See how that cock frills its neck feathers? That
one is truly aggressive, ready to fight. That other one
is docile, effeminate, oh it stands no chance...”
“Oof, that waste fellow did not even sharpen his
razors. See how sharp the razor is on the white
cock’s feet? That one will surely win...” “Ah, this
match might actually be close. This cock has long
legs but that cock can stay airborne longer with its
powerful wings. See, Seenu, both legs and wings
are important in cockfighting...”
Papa always postulated which cock would win and
Papa was always correct, but Papa never bet a
single paisa.
***
My brother and I woke to a rooster’s crow a couple
weeks after his ant bites healed. Despite the
oversaturated imagery in books and movies, a
rooster crow was an atypical way for us to wake up
– we kept no cocks on our modest sesame farm.
The sun was still hiding behind the verdant hills
and we deserved another hour of sleep at the very
least. But the cock screeched again, louder, so
cacophonously that it sounded like it was inside the house.
I pulled the covers from my face and rolled off my pillow,
leaving a damp spot where my mouth was. Yet another
squawk rang out. No, the ruckus really was coming from
within the house.
The two of us rushed into the dining room to find a
cock seemingly too miniscule to produce such large sounds
perched on top of the largest of the three chairs –
Papa’s chair. Papa was the only one allowed to sit in that
chair, that chair with a cushion, that chair at the head of
the table. Papa stood by the entrance to the kitchen,
beaming, even though there was an intruder in his chair.
“Seenu, I’ve been tough with you,” my father
began in the voice that he reserved for life lessons,
“but that is because I love you.” My brother played
at his silken beginnings of a moustache without
reciprocating sentiments. His feelings had not yet
healed. “And I will not have my only son succumb
to a base addiction like gambling. You must earn
everything in this lifetime and the next. Luck is a
demon after all, and you should never expect
anything of her.” He took a step towards the cock,
halving the distance between him and the bird.
The cock responded to the stimulus of Papa’s
movement the only way it knew how: with a
roaring crow. Papa shifted his attention back to my
brother; the cock, unthreatened, quieted and
remained perched on Papa’s chair. “You can raise
this cock and stake both your pride and reputation
on its successes. Gamble away anything more and
you’ll find yourself back on that anthill.”
Papa left the house and headed towards the sesame
fields, and my brother transformed from stolid to
bubbling with excitement.
“Oh, Avanti!” He took my hand and twirled me
like a ballerina. “Name this cock for me, for he
will be the greatest warrior in all of India!” He ran
to the backyard and uprooted the sticks that he and
his friends used as wickets and laid all the stones
he could find in a wide circle. I watched him
effervesce from the kitchen window for a moment,
and then I returned to the cock in the dining room.
“I’ll call you Krauncha, after Lord Ganesha’s
mouse. You are small, but my brother will make
you big. Oh, you’ll lift elephants.”
My brother rationed off a portion of each of his
meals for Krauncha and pitted practice fights against
the neighbor’s cocks in his makeshift arena. After a month,
the monsoons pierced the blistering summer heat and
my brother deemed Krauncha fit for battle. On a
Saturday, he brought Krauncha to the town’s weekly
cockfighting match. I didn’t go – I had to prepare dinner
for Papa and my brother. I was relieved to have a
convenient excuse; Krauncha was a pet, not a
warrior. I always called Krauncha by his name.
That afternoon my brother presented me with a
dead cock – a good sign for Krauncha because the
winner took home the defeated carcass. The
rooster was velvet to the touch, except for the
gashes across its underbelly. The cock was bigger
than Krauncha but apparently lacked the will to
fight. And Krauncha? He was perched on top of
Papa’s chair, as usual.
I plucked the fallen soldier clean of its amber
feathers, drained its blood, and dropped it, whole,
into a pot of boiling water.
Papa and my brother inhaled the rooster without
adding any salt or spices. They claimed it tasted
more like genuine victory that way. I didn’t try a
bite; the cock must have had a name to someone, to a girl like me.
My brother brought home a dead cock the next two
weekends. The third weekend, he returned with
only a shrug.
“Well, that old cock had a good run.” He bought a
bigger cock that Sunday. Most weeks, he came
home with a single dead cock. Some weeks he
would have two dead cocks: the cock he killed and
his own cock, victorious but injured and otherwise
useless to him. Those weeks Papa and my brother
would each eat an entire rooster, and Papa always
ate the bigger one. On rare weeks, my brother
would return empty handed and he and Papa would
settle for a vegetable curry.
***
“I’m proud of that Seenu.” Papa and I were alone
in the house. His profession had added undue years
to his age, and he could no longer rival the
vigorous sun for an entire day. My brother
compensated for Papa’s wizened body by toiling
hours after the sun had set. I relished the moments
I had alone with Papa. Sometimes he talked to me
like an adult. Sometimes he talked to himself. And
sometimes I could not tell which one of us he was talking to.
“All this cockfighting business has
given him discipline, and a sense of what it means
to earn. It’s really turned him into a man.”
“Yes Papa. And seeing him work the fields at night
reminds me of the stories Mom would tell about
you in your youth.”
“Ah, you’re right beti. He could take care of the
whole farm some day.” Papa was not talking to
himself today. “But he also carries so much of his
mother in those deep-set eyes and loose curls... so
many fragments of her. He bears that impatience
of hers. See beti, the cruelest thing about love is
that you fall in love with people’s imperfections.
You fall in love with their crooked nose thinking it
makes them special. I fell in love with your
mother’s dreams for more, her dreams for
something else. But she’s long gone now and that
love has faded; now I can see her imperfections for
what they were. She was impatient, unrealistic.”
“Papa, if you’re proud of my brother you should
tell him. He admires you, even when he challenges
you. It’s something that he’s been needing to
hear.”
“I will, when the time is right. But first, I must wait
and watch him grow into his manhood.”
“Papa, are discipline and earning important for
womanhood, too?” Papa did not have an answer
for me. He began talking to himself again.
***
I stopped naming the cocks after several months; it
made cleaning the carcasses of my pets easier. But
I still prayed for them every Saturday. That year,
for Sankranti, my brother bought a cock with
rainbow plumage. Its hues danced from crimson to
violet as it puffed its prideful chest. The cock
survived Sankranti and the rest of January. I had to
name him. I called him Bhima, after the
gargantuan hero from the Mahabharata that slayed
every last evil Kaurava brother – all one hundred
of them. Papa said that Bhima was dropped on a
boulder when he was a baby and the boulder
shattered. My Bhima, too, would be unbreakable. I
prayed for him every day, not just Saturdays.
***
Week after week my brother would return with
Bhima unscathed and the cadaver of a larger cock
than the week before. And each week, my brother
would stake more of his pride and reputation on
Bhima, always returning victorious. I bought a
larger pot to keep up with my brother and Bhima.
Soon, however, my brother started coming home
with more than a doubled pride and reputation. He
greeted me in the kitchen wearing a shirt that fit
his growing proportions and bell-bottom pants like
the ones college kids wore.
“I’m not one to ask you the hard questions,
brother. I just ask that you be careful. Don’t let
Papa catch you in those clothes. God knows we
can’t afford any of those.”
“I earned this. This isn’t gambling. I’m only
betting on my own cock.” My brother strutted
about the kitchen like a peacock. “Look Avanti, I
even got these for you.” He coaxed a packet
wrapped with newspaper from his tight pockets
and handed it to me as if he was giving me a dead
cock. Inside, I found twelve copper bangles, a
complete set, each one studded with false gems.
“Brother, no. Take these back. I don’t want to hurt
you.” My brother smiled from the corners of his
mouth and gingerly took my left hand with his
right. He slipped the bangles over my fingers.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I repeated. The bangles
were too small and caught on the base of my
thumb. My brother applied pressure and a twist,
and the bangles slid onto my wrist. The bangles
hurt.
***
Last week, my brother came home with the largest
cock I have ever seen. I doubt that it would have fit
in my new pot.
“Papa! Look at this cock Bhima slayed! He really
will kill one hundred!”
Papa emerged from his bedroom with a scowl and
two ropes – one for my brother’s hands and one for
his feet.
“I told you not to gamble! I told you not to
gamble!”
“Papa, what?” My brother, dressed in his hand-medowns,
played innocent.
“I did not raise a gambler and a liar! Mister
Rajendra came to me, begging for money just an
hour ago. He says he lost fifty rupees to you,
betting against Bhima.”
The invincible Bhima cowered under my brother
to attenuate Papa’s berating. My brother looked at
the ropes, at me, at the ropes again, and then he
sprinted out the door with Bhima under his arm.
***
Today is Saturday. I have not seen my brother all
week and I skipped cooking Papa’s dinner to come
to the weekly cockfight. Neither my brother nor
Bhima are here, and I fear that they will not show
next week, either.
***
My father is not a gambling man, but he certainly
is a betting man. This time he’s lost his son. I
wonder if he considers this loss gradual, expected,
deliberate.